Petrus Christus was the leading painter of Bruges in the years following the death of Jan van Eyck in 1441. In this portrait of striking verisimilitude, the artist moves beyond the flat neutral backgrounds of portraits by his predecessor. Instead, Christus places his sitter in the corner of a warmly illuminated room. To enhance the illusion, a fly rests momentarily upon a fictive frame. The "carved" inscription below functions as a signature and a declaration; the sitter looks directly at the viewer and boldly states, "Petrus Christus made me in the year 1446."

Signed on the lower edge of the trompe-l’oeil frame "Petrus Christus made me" and dated 1446, this remarkably life-like portrayal of a lay brother of the Carthusian Order is among the earliest independent portraits of the European Paintings Collection. Exquisitely rendered in astonishing detail, it closely follows the conventions of portraiture established by Christus’s renowned predecessor in Bruges, Jan van Eyck. Like Van Eyck, Christus posed the sitter in a three-quarter bust-length view, and directed his gaze toward the observer. Both artists made use of the trompe-l’oeil frame that serves as a fictive window through which the viewer and the sitter "communicate." But Christus improved on his predecessor’s model by heightening the illusion of space in two ways. Instead of the plain dark background previously favored, Christus placed the Carthusian against the corner space of a room with its own interior lighting, and he added a fly perched on the edge of the windowsill, seemingly ready to take flight either into or out of the implied space.

Countering the brilliant verisimilitude of the representation and the confident demeanor of the sitter, the fly is a symbol of death and decay, and reminds us of the transience of life. It has also been considered a talisman against evil, and thus would serve an apotropaic function for the pious Carthusian. At some point the sitter’s identity perhaps was lost, and the portrait was changed with the addition of a halo to indicate a saint. Bruno, the founder of the Carthusian Order who was canonized in the sixteenth century, may have been the figure intended by this alteration. As the incised arc and clumsily-painted halo altered Christus’s original intent and obscured the innovative spatial depth of the picture, it was removed. Two nineteenth-century copies of the portrait were made in Valencia and indicate that the painting must have found its way to Spain previous to that time.

Max J. Friedländer. "Die Van Eyck, Petrus Christus." Die altniederländische Malerei. 1, Berlin, 1924, pp. 145–46, pl. 50, finds it similar to the portrait of Edward Grimston (National Gallery, London, on loan from the Earl of Verulam), painted in the same year, but in a printing error gives the date on our painting as 1466.

Mary Logan Berenson. Letter to Duveen Bros. March 4, 1927, states that B. B. [Bernard Berenson] is "very much upset at not being able to follow Dr. Friedländer . . . but that fine 'Petrus Christus' portrait is certainly not Italian, whatever else it may be".

A Catalogue of Paintings in the Bache Collection. under revision. New York, 1937, unpaginated, no. 20, ill., as "Dionysius the Carthusian(?)".

Alan Burroughs. Art Criticism from a Laboratory. Boston, 1938, pp. 249–50, rejects the date 1446, observing that it is "strangely added in a different pigment" and finding the style not appropriate to this date.

Wolfgang Schöne. Dieric Bouts und seine Schule. Berlin, 1938, p. 56, no. 4, lists it with the works of Christus, but with a note that he has not seen the painting.

Harry B. Wehle and Margaretta Salinger. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: A Catalogue of Early Flemish, Dutch and German Paintings. New York, 1947, pp. 17–19, ill., catalogue it as "Portrait of a Carthusian," observing that the grounds for identifying it with Dionysius are not convincing.

Letter to Margaretta Salinger. November 22, 1950, notes in connection with the halo that Dionysius was never considered a saint or formally canonized, and suggests that the artist may have portrayed the founder of the order, Saint Bruno, "under the guise of a suitable model".

Art Treasures of the Metropolitan: A Selection from the European and Asiatic Collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1952, p. 266, no. 93, colorpl. 93.

Erwin Panofsky. Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Character. Cambridge, Mass., 1953, vol. 1, pp. 188, 310, 312, 488–89 n. 5 (to p. 310); vol. 2, pl. 252, fig. 405, for "stylistic reasons" considers the halo probably not original, and suggests that if it is authentic the sitter was cast in the role of Saint Bruno; discusses the possible significance of the fly and observes that the illusionistic use of such an insect can be traced back to classical antiquity.

H. J. J. Scholtens. "Petrus Christus en zijn portret van een kartuizer." Oud-Holland 75 (1960), pp. 59–72, states that the hair and beard identify the sitter as a Carthusian lay brother not a monk, probably a member of the Dal van Graciën monastery outside Bruges; comments that, as no Carthusian lay brothers became saints, the halo is probably a later addition, possibly to give the portrait a more pious appearance but not to transform it into a portrait of Saint Bruno; observes that the fly was added to enliven the composition and as a symbol of evil and uncleanness.

Gustav Künstler. "Vom entstehen des Einzelbildnisses und seiner frühen Entwicklung in der flämischen Malerei." Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 27 (1974), pp. 50–55, fig. 20, feels that the role of the halo in the composition suggests that it may be original; supports the identification of the sitter with Dionysius; believes that the fly represents the devil.

Peter H. Schabacker. Petrus Christus. Utrecht, 1974, pp. 23–25, 33, 43, 48, 73, 81–83, 128, 130, no. 3, fig. 3, repeats Scholtens's [see Ref. 1960] observations about the identity of the sitter and agrees that the halo is probably a later addition; suggests that the sitter was one of the converses at the monastery of Genadedal near Bruges; calls it the only known formal portrait of a monk prior to Gossart's Benedictine monk of 1526 (Musée du Louvre, Paris).

Guy Bauman. "Early Flemish Portraits, 1425–1525." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 43 (Spring 1986), pp. 6–7, 11, 36–38, 42, 44, 51, 53, 58, figs. 6 (color detail) and 28 (color overall), due to the "intimate quality" of the portrait, suspects that the sitter was a close friend or relative of the artist and that the portrait was not commissioned but made for presentation.

Shirley Neilsen Blum in "The Open Window: A Renaissance View." The Window in Twentieth-century Art. Exh. cat., Neuberger Museum, State University of New York at Purchase. Purchase, N.Y., 1986, pp. 11–12, fig. 5, regards the trompe l'oeil fly as not yet fully explained, yet a means of dissolving the barrier between real and illusionistic space.

Introduction by James Snyder inThe Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Renaissance in the North. New York, 1987, pp. 10, 27, colorpl. 5.

Peter Klein. Letter. March 21, 1989, reports on the results of his dendrochronological study of this painting and suggests a probable date of creation of "from 1440 upwards".

Maryan W. Ainsworth. Petrus Christus: Renaissance Master of Bruges. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1994, pp. 15, 28–30, 32, 49–53, 89, 92–96, 100, 154, 168–69, 178–79, 186, 189–90, no. 5, figs. 14, 62, 63 (detail of inscription; infrared reflectogram of overall and detail), ill. p. 92 (color), observes that this work and the portrait of Edward Grimston (National Gallery, London, on loan from the Earl of Verulam) "originated from one pattern of head shape and size"; notes that the date 1446 could have been inscribed on the original frame, then added to the inscription after that frame was removed

Joe Fronek. "Painting Techniques, and Their Effects and Changes in the Los Angeles 'Portrait of a Man' by Christus." Petrus Christus in Renaissance Bruges: An Interdisciplinary Approach. New York, 1995, p. 176.

Georg Zeman with the collaboration of Fritz Koreny inEarly Netherlandish Drawings from Jan van Eyck to Hieronymus Bosch. Exh. cat., Rubenshuis. Antwerp, 2002, pp. 64, 66, notes that a similar ledge, over which the tail feathers of a falcon reach, appears in Christus's drawing, "Portrait of a Nobleman with a Falcon" (Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt).

Boudewijn Bakker Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. Landschap en Wereldbeeld: Van Van Eyck tot Rembrandt. Bossum, The Netherlands, 2004, pp. 119–20, 406 n. 240, figs. 26–26a (overall and detail), believes this may be a portrait of Dionysius the Carthusian, although this cannot be confirmed; adds that the fly could be a memento mori, as human mortality and the belief that the end was near played an important part in the Carthusian environment; notes that Dionysius mentions insects, not the fly in particular, as an example of the great care and love of God in every detail of creation, including the small and the ugly and that, Dionysius saw mankind, like the fly, as just a small part of God's creation.

The halo was removed by Hubert von Sonnenburg in June 1992. He noted that examination under magnification clearly showed that an incision was made with a compass in order to make the halo; its center point damaged the paint layers at the sitter's right temple.

John Brealey (1978) feels that the off-center placement of the date indicates that it was surely an afterthought, possibly Christus' own.